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Show 6 REPORT OF TEE (10?&XISEIONER OF WDIAN AFFAIRS. As shted in the annual report of the Office last year, the number of nonreservation schools has been expanded beyond just limits. While the new rules for the collection of pupils for them have effected reforms, yet in the effort to secure pupils the desirability as well as eligibility of the material is too often neglected. Several hundred so-called "white Indians" have been returned to their homes, and it is now believed that the schools are practically freed from this class. This has caused some demoralization at a few schools where a large number were sent home. Superintendents have loyally cooperated in the mat-ter to the end that the educational benefactions of the Government may be legitimately applied for the benefit of the real Indians If in furtherance of this idea, the number of nonreservation schools could be limited to the actual necessities of the service, the money thus saved could be profitably applied to building up and developing the home education of Indians in reservation day and boarding schools. The nonreservation school idea has grown out. of proportion to its legitimate sphere. If properly contracted and limited in scope, para-doxical as it may appear, its zone of usefulness would be expanded. With fewer schools of this class the struggle for pupils could be prop-erly controlled, a better class intellectually and physically could be enrolled, with a consequent increase in effective results. The returned student being of a higher type would have resultant benefit on his peo-ple, which could not fail to elevate and civilize. The money spent by the Government on the dullard, or the physically weak boy or girl, who has been enrolled in these schools is practically wasted, while on the other hand that expended in educating in these distant tichools the brightest youth of the tribe, with constitutions able to stand the strain of new climatic conditions, will introduce into the home life of: the older Indians a leaven which begins to work from ib introduction. There is a grave necessity for additional educational facilities on the Navaho Reservation in New Mexico and on the San Carlos and White Mountain Apache reservations in Arizona. There are hundreds of children on these reservations who have never seen a school. The present schools there are filled to the limit of their capacity, and the field should be extended by boarding and day schools. The Flathead Reservation has only a small school in inadequate buildings, while the Cceur d'A1Bne in Idaho has none. These are all practically virgin fields for the exertions of the Government. The parents, knowing nothing of home education, are hostile to all nonreservation schools, but when the results of education can bebrought to them through res-ervation schools they can easily be persuaded to send their children away. The planting of reservation day and boarding schools is in further-ance of the "small community" plan of bringing the adult Indian into closer contact with the white teacher, matron, farmer, and mechanic. It gives individualism in instruction, and furnishes object lessons for |
